Project Kevin Part 1: Field and Lab Work

The astute social media observers among you may have noticed our new ceratopsian whose skull restoration was just finished in time for its debut at Tucson. Here's how we got it there in 2 parts. Today: the hot and nasty work.

Yep, that's hot

The site was originally discovered in the summer of 2017 by one of our landowners, rancher buddies and all around good guy Larry in the upper Judith River Formation of central Montana. We located a partial humerus, a lot of ribs and several vertebrae exposed on the erosional surface right away. The entire deposit was constricted to about 15cm (6 inches) of highly concreted sandstone, and from the exposed highly eroded elements we could tell it was from an ornithischian of some flavor. Odds were it was probably an incomplete scattered duckbill in fairly difficult to work matrix, so we decided to keep scouting and come back later.

The site is very remote but also gorgeous

That later turned out to be the summer of 2018. It was hot. Really hot. Continued scouting in that area turned up some pretty neat lag deposits but not a whole lot of good skeletal material. It was time to bite the bullet and see what the old duckbill site was going to give us. Who knows, there might be a skull in there.

Digging begins. We love our shade tents.

Sometimes we get visitors to the site

With 4 people digging we made some good progress on the first day of the dig. Around lunchtime I had moseyed on up to the top of a nearby bluff to get cell signal to call home to the boss and give him an update on how we weren't finding anything great out there and might relocate our scouting locality to somewhere closer to camp. Coming back to the site I ran into Jacob who was looking for me to let me know we had "the weirdest duckbill he's ever seen" in the quarry.

That ain't no duckbill horn.

Grace had found a brow horn.

Lainie demonstrates proper air hammer technique.

So, not a duckbill (though to be fair we did find some scattered hadrosaur material at the site). We dug more that week finding much more skull material, but had to come home for resupply and other projects. We got smart during trip #2 and brought out some diesel powered earth moving equipment as the overburden went from practically zero to nearly 3 meters very quickly. Again more skull material was found. There was some postcrania too but we all know that ceratopsian postcrania is pretty much worthless, right?

Bobcat good, getting hit by 2 dust devils in a row bad for shade tents

After the 3rd trip, the bone was very sparse along all edges of the excavation and we were pretty confident to call the dig finished.

Headed home with a load of jackets. Rock Chalk!

Lab work began right away. There were a few tricky bits getting the nasty concretion off the bones but for the most part they came out looking pretty good. Once cleaned up we got a much better idea of what parts of the skull we had (field identifications are always tentative). It also became pretty obvious the skeleton was trampled by other very inconsiderate dinosaurs way back in the cretaceous, as we had many broken bones with no parts to go back with them.

Right brow horn, missing some parts, but we can fix that.

Bone quality was pretty good and we ended up with most of the skull, quite a bit of the neck, some dorsal vertebrae and ribs, and curiously a random chunk of pubis.

Detail of jugal edge. Beautiful bone texture.

Stay tuned for the next installment where we show how we went from a pile of bones to a completed skull restoration in 100 easy steps!

The Accidental Ichthyornis

Field identifications are problematic.

In mid October of this year the weather in Kansas was still warm enough to extend our dig season. That trip was pretty successful, finding a back half of a Protosphyraena and several small fish. Early on, Mike even thought he found another Pteranodon leg.

The drive to the site is a lot tougher when you can't see landmarks

We came out early in the morning. Man was it foggy. The entire day was supposed to be dedicated to finishing up excavation at several small sites. Since the "Pteranodon leg" site was so small, Mike and Jacob spearheaded the excavation there, while I wandered off to collect a Cimolichthys head and isolated Ichthyodectes site.

Several bones coming out at the site as discovered. Definitely not fish.

The "Pteranodon leg" showed some promising chunks of bone coming out, however inspection as they got down to the bone layer showed not a whole lot was there. Not like the large bones we were hoping to find for a Pterosaur.

That's a big hole for such a little block

Not a huge worry though, we perimeter the sites and very rarely expose the bone in the field, we will just find out what the "Pteranodon leg" looks like when we get back to the lab.

Jacob jackets and despairs as I tell him we have to go dig up another fish

Looking back at the video, just as Jacob began jacketing the specimen, I show up back at the site proudly announcing the discovery of the "Nia" Xiphactinus site that I blogged about last time. We all decided to drive over to the big fish and start work as the jacket cured. We were so stoked about the big fish that it was about a month later when we finally asked ourselves "Hey! Where did that jacket go?"

Turns out, we left it sitting there in the field, right next to a regularly visited oil well. Whoops! Over Christmas, Mike returned to the site to see if someone had poached it. Nope, the jacket was still exactly where we had left it. I guess you can say we got dang lucky. Let's never do that again.

Mike pulled it out and brought it back to the lab, where it sat for a week as I let it dry out (dry chalk behaves better than wet stuff when prepping, especially with small fossils). That's when the Eureka Moment happened: prepping down on the "Pteranodon leg" things weren't looking right. I immediately switched to my microscope, pin vise and very low pressure air abrasion (about 3psi with sodium bicarbonate blast media). My suspicions on the specimen's identity were confirmed when I found teeth. Pteranodon doesn't have teeth, but there's one small thing in the chalk with reptile-textured bone that does have it: a bird! Not only was it a bird, but the only complete articulated skull of Ichthyornis, who had been found only in fairly incomplete form since Marsh's days in the 1870s. This accidental and overlooked jacket suddenly turned into one of the rarest finds in the entire 160 year history of fossil hunting in the Niobrara.

Bird teeth, just a few milimeters long

Stay tuned for project updates as we work on this spectacular fossil.

A day in the life of a Daspletosaurus bone

Some people asked me not too long ago about what we do in order to get some of these bones ready for molding. In the case of Pete III, our Daspletosaurus from Montana, the condition of the bone gave us some additional problems. All specimens of course get excavated and painstakingly prepared by our expert staff, but in Pete III's case, even the prep necessitated the invention of new techniques which I published on a few years back. The entire specimen was pixelated, with some bones made up of hundreds of thousands of fragments. Lots of glue was needed to even expose the bone, which is huge, literally Tyrannosaurus rex sized. Once done the left ilium looked kind of like this:

Next up is reconstruction of any major missing bits and holes with epoxy putty like Aves Apoxie Sculpt. That's the grey stuff.

We then apply a barrier layer of B-72 to hold everything together for the next steps. Shiny!

Then we take our gorgeous bone and smear the whole thing with tinted Hydrocal.

 Yuck. OK now it doesn't even look like a fossil. Never fear, most of it will be gone soon. The main aim is to work the Hydrocal into all the seriously tiny cracks in the surface to better hold the bone together. This also reduces the amount of the relief in the specimen so molding goes much faster. The excess on the surface is removed with air abrasion.

Doesn't look so shiny anymore, but we can fix that with a wee bit more of very thin B-72.

And there you have it, one half of a bone restored in a few days time. Now we just make a support jacket so the entire thing can be flipped over and the process repeated.

Beefy Platecarpus Restoration Update!

For the past few weeks, TPI field crews have been scouring the outcrops of Western Kansas and finding some spectacular specimens. More on those in a future blog update.

Since the field crew was gone, the lab crew is much less distracted and has made great progress in assembling the Cap'n Chuck specimen of Platecarpus tympaniticus. Skull reconstruction is now complete and painting of the small restored areas is all that;s left. total length ended up being 52cm, but the width gives it more of a bulldog appearance than the lower chalk Plesioplatecarpus planifrons. I'm still trying to get used to all these new names since the reclassification of plioplatecarpines a few years back.

Top view

The only bones I was completely missing were both squamosals, but they were pretty simple to fabricate.

If you look carefully, we even included the mounted epipterygoids

The skeleton has had individual clips fabricated to hold each bone securely in place. Those subassemblies are now being fastened to the armature. The specimen is intended to be hung at its future museum home, however building it on cables in the lab is too unsteady. The posts supporting the superstructure will later be removed before shipment. The light colored vertebra fourth from the left is the first part of the mosasaur I discovered coming out of the outcrop.

Ribs beginning to be fit, though all still need adjustment

Individual bones are assembled into segments so that it can be quickly and precisely set up in a new facility. All limbs are removable, as are the ribs and skull. The vertebral column breaks down into segments. With any luck though, the steel armature will be nearly invisible on the final mount.

Front paddles nearly assembled.

Enchodus rears it's head!

Over the past few weeks, Jacob and I were out doing some scouting and excavation in the lower Niobrara chalk in western Kansas. With the recent drought in the area, not much erosion has happened and so specimens were a bit tough to come by. Though we were blessed with instructions to just record fish localities, secure them, and move on, sometimes the fish are just too good to pass up.

Enchodus palatine fang eroding out

One of our long term goals is to expand our 3 dimensional fish reproductions from Kansas. We've completed 4 so far (Xiphactinus, Ichthyodectes, Saurodon, Pachyrhizodus) and we're working on Megalocoelacanthus as our 5th. Enchodus has always been on our wish list (one of the most common fish in the WIS, and those fangs... people love pointy parts), however the large specimens of Enchodus petrosus are very rare, especially anything resembling a complete skeleton and not just isolated palatine bones with fangs.

RMDRC 13-001 fanf after prep

Jacob struck first with a very large Enchodus fang protruding from the grey chalk between MU 7 and 8 He took down the overburden and exposed a sizable disarticulated skull with pectoral fins and vertebrae. We prepared a good portion of it in the lab and have decided that this specimen is where we will mold the majority of the individual elements from.

RMDRC 13-001 digsite

A few days later I was working an outcrop slightly lower (just above MU 6) and was shocked to find an articulated skull weathering out of some seriously soft chalk. I hoped it was attached to the rest of an Enchodus.

RMDRC 13-005 as found

Originally we were going to "Sternberg" the specimen (pouring plaster directly over the exposed bones to stabilize everything in the jacket) assuming that there was more resent at the site. Unfortunately, sometimes all you get is a head. In this case a giant one (lower jaw 25cm long) indicating an overall length of about 1.25m. This will be the basis for our overall reconstruction.

RMDRC 13-005, bottom side prepared

We're hoping for the prototype to be completed and ready for SVP at the end of October. Fingers crossed.

Restoring a Protostega

Back in October of 2011, the lovable TPI field crew was brought out to a ranch in western Kansas (very near the site of Sternberg's famous "fish within a fish" specimen) to help with the recovery of giant sea turtle. This turtle skeleton will be reposited in the Sternberg Museum of Natural History at Fort Hays State University. The term giant is used loosely here, since the actual turtle was only about a meter in shell length, nowhere near the car-sized members of its genus that would later cruise the oceans. Field photos shamelessly borrowed from Mike Everhart's wonderful Oceans of Kansas website.

Making the hole bigger with power tools. Also shovels.

The turtle site was located fairly low stratigraphically, and was entombed in a fairly hard grey chalk. Our first order of business was to identify the bone layer and then break out the power tools to remove the overburden from a wide area. I'll say it again, that cute little green jackhammer is a backsaver!

Mike Everhart and I jacketing the slab, with the finger hair saving nitrile gloves

Once down to the bone level we perimitered the specimen, cut around with the chainsaw, and jacketed the whole slab.

Perimitering in the quarry

Exposing more of the bones

That was the easy part! Back in the lab we began by using air abrasion and pneumatic scribes to remove the matrix from the fossil, first the individual bones that were collected before TPI arrived.

Individual bone before prep in the lab...

...and after air abrasion, scribe and glue work

A few interesting surprises popped up once I started removing the chalk. Abrasions on the ventral side of the plastron seem to indicate this turtle pulled itself up some distant beach, possibly suggesting it was a female getting to dry land to lay its eggs, though some modern male sea turtles also come out of the water occasionally. The carapace and especially plastron were covered by what look a heck of a lot like puncture wounds, all unhealed. The front flippers were totally lacking any parts below the elbow, in fact one humerus was bitten completely in half. It sure looks like the turtle was a partial meal for a mosasaur like Tylosaurus before it finally sank to the sea bottom.

Abrasion and puncture marks on the plastron

Once the bones were prepared they were all molded individually (when possible). The casts were then manipulated into larger assemblies, where we filled in missing parts and took out some crushing distortion. These assemblies are then used to make production molds for cast copies.

Carapace subassembly in a thixotropic mold

Original bone pile being molded for parts. 

We should have the project done in the next few weeks, just in time to display at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show this January. Stop on by to check it out!

Still prepping the Avaceratops

Though I had a good time attending the SVP meeting in Raleigh, NC this month, it put me a little behinf on prep work. Jacob was able to join the preparation frenzy and between the two of us we've gotten a lot done.

Nasals, showing strange asymmetrical suture

Getting the individual bones prepped out of their jackets is giving us some valuable insights. Though the bones are well preserved, each one is getting its own custom made Hydrocal support cradle to keep them from getting damaged during storage.

The deep and short left dentary, with all teeth

We've uncovered the brow horns now, prepped out the left lower jaw, and finished the nasals. If you're in town you should consider stopping by to get an up-close look at the material. It's some strange stuff!

Strange centrosaurine brow horn, resting in its cradle

About halfway there

Jeez, UTC is very challenging prep. Slowly working through the very fragmented nature of the bone, but luckily the matrix is also fairly soft. We are, however, using a lot of consolidants to keep everything together. It's really interesting to see how things are taking shape now that we have prepared pieces that are starting to fit together, such as the right front arm. Below is a pic of the coracoid, humerus, ulna, meetacarpal and phalanx that we have finished.

Right arm taking shape, scapula still being prepared

After taking measurements and scaling them to the AMNH's Centrosaurus skeleton, it appears that our critter will be a hair over 6m long (19.5 feet) if it were complete.

Mid caudal... big, but no transverse processes

We're always working on a bunch of different things at the same time, so just for Saurian, we'd like to announce we've started baby steps towards working on our Daspletosaurus Pete III again. Jacob is working on a block that had a fibula, distal tarsal, and 5 articulated mid-caudal vertebrae in it. Hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow everything will be finished, and that's one more big jacket off of the shelf!

Pretty fibula!

Small projects

Yep we all have them. In addition to the decades of prep backlog of big, complete and interesting specimens there is always that nagging pile of individual bones and small specimens that gets collected then sits as priority number 12 on the shelf. Sometimes it's a good organizational effort (and therapy) to get these things knocked off the to-do list. Plus it frees up a bit of space for the next season's collecting efforts (which should begin any week now, hopefully.

You ever get the feeling you're being watched?

This past summer during beer week in Montana I found a small shard of tyrannosaur tooth sticking out of a lag deposit. I suggested to one of our guests, Terri, that she could spend some time excavating it. Turns out she discovered that the tooth was still connected to a chunk of jaw. Unfortunately digging it out was a bit of a chore since the sandstone got really hard really quickly. It did clean up nicely though, and will be going on display sometime today.

Tyrannosaur maxilla and tooth

Some progress is being made on Pete III, our challenging Daspletosaurus torosus, also from Montana. This huge 70 pound monstrosity of a jacket contained just one spindly rib. That and lots of sandstone. Whatever, it's off the shelf now and nearly in the clean room.

There's the rib!

We're not all about preparing partial dinosaur bones though. This Pteranodon sternbergi metacarpal was pulled from the lower chalk in western Kansas a few years back. Should have been prepared years ago.

Isolated bones are so pretty